Introduction-
America's
distinction is in being liberal, practical and having shallow historical vision
and technocratic confidence. But,
especially unique is its being modelled
on natural not historical sciences and involving liberal individualism. Looking beyond history to see a natural plan
below. So tinkiering technocratically
with individuals responding to stimuli in the natural process of
capitalism. Evolving between 1870 and
1920, it has its root in the German historicism and has its rock in American
Exceptionalism (AE), the belief that America has an exceptional place in
history based on her republican government and economic opportunity. The civil war and rapid industrialism caused
us to understand history in the modern sense: a process of continuous ,
qualitative change moved and ordered by processes within itself. We decided that AE doesn't block the forces
of modernity from us, but rather supports it.
The liberal harmony was shifted into the future. As it seemed the flux of history would
engulf us we turned to a technical quantification of these natural processes to
control them. AE evolves from liberal
values and a distrust of capitalism and history.
EUROPEAN SOCIAL SCIENCE IN
ANTEBELLUM AMERICA
CHAPTER 1: THE DISCOVERY OF
MODERNITY
Social sciences emerged from
historians recognition of history being of human creations. Not until the early 19th century did the
quantitatively, cause and effect , view of history changing take hold. All reality was then put into historical
context and this is call historicism or a historicist view.
The
rational view taken to nature and the particularistic view of history emerged
in Mostesquieu, adam Smith and Condorcet.
They noted differences in national arts in time. Civic humanism in the renaisance gave such
things meaning and led to 18th century understanding of historical
causation. Agriculture was stable and
modern civilization, commerce and refinement caused decay. Adam Smith said rejuvination was in freeing
uniform behavior of all men in all nations and time. Smith found virtue etc. rooted in economic stages of diversity
called for representative govt.
Condorcet saw human reason pushing history forward. Adam Smith accidents. French revolution made kant and hegel say we
must work out our destinies in the arena of history. Romanticism created an appreciation of historical and other
differences and contingency.
The
term "livweral" was first used by early 19th century radicals trying
to end mercantilist and fuedal systems.
It took the love of diversity and enlightenment rights rap, but always
has a conflict between the individuals rights and public good. English were for the individual and negative
economimic tendency called "classical liberalism". German liberalism of kant needed state action
and harmony for the development of the state.
Conservatives said the classical liberalism created disharmony and
exploitation of workers. Comte (in
France) accepted much of this organicist criticism and Smiths' diversity and
Condorcet's progress of reason and vied for an authoritarian technocratic
hierarchal state. Germany's recent
unification made it think all rights are from the state. Economy had to be
studied as a part of a nation ( England had lost its grasp of reality). Marx came out of this German mileau. In England, Malthus and Ricardo had dire
predictions (if marginal land was brought into production less productiveness
would cause rent to rise). JS Mills saw
improvement if moral behavior (abstinence) was practiced. Spencer put the last piece of social
sciences in place by advocating volunteer associations (embodying heterogenuity
by being cooperative in competition).
Another problem conquered was how to make solid values in a changing
world: reason, progress and law (used
in an escape from history) and science.
Laws of nature through which divine governence flowed melded science and
eternal natural law views positivism (drawing on the enlightenments idea that
only phenomenon could be known) said scientific knowledge was the only certain
form an dtherefore preferred. Newtons
synthetic deductive form was for Mill the decisive mark of science, but that
many factors in Social sciences other than political economy required
"art' and human nature to be accounted for. Comte said sociology didn't need the synthetic deductive form of
Newton and MIll. Via historical study
laws like his animistic to metaphysic to reason could find laws of social
progress. Natural laws found could be
applied. Mill disagreed: Politics world
was moral philosophy and would be unlikely to yield to science. Hegel's history put all in teleological
categories and froze history studies.
The exceptions were historians that used science to detect facts of
history without vision.. Ranke for one.
Positivists said the meat was below the chronicle of kings. Germany goes into history, but England, with
its continuity, goes more for political economy.
THE AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALIST
VISION
We
devoloped from a revoution in Christian and republican time. Reformation prophecy would bring promised
millenium and end history.
"court" folk believed in state and improvement, country folk
believed in a turning back to first principles. Court managed history, country sidestep it. We landed between agricultural and early
commerce in government. republicanism +
protest = "civil religion".
republican denouncing of corruption and sin dovetailed. Before the revolution our destiny was
likened to the tuetonic anglo saxson of rome and magna carta fame. Both views flatten history and make it
"the past" and go away and take us to a special future.
Political
economy wise we feared the industrialism of England, but admired the labor as
virtue and our fears were mitigated by the availability of land and republican
lifestyle opportunity. These political
and economic views of history formed American Exceptionalism, though often the
premises weren't challenged before celebration. The parties formed around and split around AE. A. Jackson democrats saw AE threatened by
encroaching aristocracy. The whigs felt his efforts to represent the masses
over men would lead to tyranny. They,
like JS Mill thought an understanding arisocracy to bolster against the masses'
tyranny swing necessary.
There were cntrifugal
tendencies at work those. The
Protestant , republican, and liberal ideals in AE made an unsteady
alliance. Running counter to all of
this were organic thoughts of public good and commmunity (opposing
republicanism and moral self responsibility) as well as doubts about our
viability.
Antebellum contexts of social
science--
The major anti AE, in this fertile Social Science soil, came from
the South and specifically John C. Calhoun and Dew. They made slavery bulwak of republicanism against the corruption
of northern industrialism. Slavery was timeless
and created freedom for the superior races and we need the organic public food
social vision not the individualism of Adam Smith. This vision died with the Confederacy. This was based on Comte.
The other critics were radical working class types. Skidmore was one. Most accepted we could use our current intitutions. Skidmore didn"t.
The
mainstream were Whigs and Democrates.
The Whig conservative believed in education as the bulwark against the
potentially radical natural rights. The
Demos were for diversity. This and elite religious college tendencies most
affected social sciences. As sufferage
spread they felt their import diminish
and so turned to social institutions.
They pushed political economy, history and politics into the still largely
classical college curriculum. Social
sciences were taught as moral philosophy betwen the theology and natural
philosophy within the Scottish sciences ahd devoloped. It was practical and had the religious
morality. Rational reflection upon
truths that came were moral (and you oculd still accept Lockes empiricism,
Berkely without idealism and Hume without skepticicm.
The
debate over AE was big in the universities.
Political science was first studied and it concerned very diverse topics
so it isn't suprising a German immigrant (with Whig sympathies was the most
influential person. Francis Lieber, natural rights and law and
state love and moral teachings took root well here. Redeveloped Kantian "political ethics". As social beings, the state was on highest
expression (with a liberal economy).
But the government must be limited.
Man is individual and social so goernment must be and be limited. He didn't like French majoritarian
democracy. Then he started to involve
history via "social analysis" in which the essential was separated
from the superficial. He thus okayed
history. Politics connection and study of detail and tied our country to
Tuetonic "anglican" self government "articulated" (not
abstract like Frances) could balance wealth and liberty in longevity. His friend, Alex de Tocqueville, was less
sanguine fearing the lack of hierarchy will kill differentiation and lead to a
mass of self centered and unimaginative conformists.
Walker
Say, Wayland did political economy and consciously used ideas to stem revolt
and favor free enterprise. He pushed
"moral consumption" Others
went for protarrif "positive" action to keep America a strong leader. List mixed this with Nationalism and
returned to Germany and wrote a founding text of German Nationalistic
economics. Carey refuted Malthus
because labor was getting more efficient and , therefore, worth more!He used
history to show that all failings to achieve capital formation and stop poverty
were moral (in wars and pilferring) but republican government would stop
that. Carey said tarrifs were good as
they caused diversidy and association, not colonial specialization (like
Englands mercantilism caused) He bolstered his laws of association with physics
metaphors (heat and motion0 not historical analysis. Correct political economy was as G-d would have it, as in the
workings of physics. Seeing labor and
capital in harmony he fell into Whig disfavor when he noted that greenback
currency 'would' increase wages, loosen credit and accelerate growth. He was sure that all was well and that
"G-d was not a blunderer."
After the civil war all was less well and his influence diminished.
Both
protariff and free trade folk attributed progress to natural law, not
history. When history did appear it was
to be as a realm of error, superstition and corruption. The laws of nature were, of course, these
through which G-d governed. After, in
the gilded age, secular nationalism and historicism begin to undermine the
early conception of natural law and AE.
PART II - THE CRISIS OF AE,
1865 - 1896
CHAPTER 3 ESTABLISHMENT OF
THE SOCIAL SCIENCE DISCIPLINES
Before the civil war the
social sciences were undifferentiated.
After the war , wealth and specialization. This trend was galvinized by crisis in AE. Science challenged the idea of divine
providence and challenges and challenges and change via industrialization and
reconstruction challenged our place in the sun. 1860s and 1870s many went to German universities which had no religious
test and had the discovery of natural knowledge in mind. Protestants after the civil war attacked
Catholics. The NE gentry thought them
both nuts. Amasa Walker, Lester Ward
and Carrol Wright led this. This is
before Darwins 1870 origins" The
positivism of liberal gentry and orthodoxy grew and as they bent orthodoxy to
christianity and started fighting bias, cencorship and founding secular
universities, they took a critical eye to AE.
Germans coming after the 1870commune of Paris brought communism, this
and lack of upward mobility, shook faith in AE. It gave us our first look at change. Saloman said there is discontinuity with the past and so we can
only deal with the existing. Realism
and study of fact was born. Moasculine
and hating the subjective, it went to war.
Statistics use rose. American
uniqueness was upheld in natural law but failure to accept the possibility of
change led to many apocolyptic proclimations.
These all had class conflict behind it.
The NE intellectual gentry on the sidelines during the war took a seat
and took over moral authority from the religious and with the rich.
HISTORICO-POLITICS
AND rEPUBLICAN PRINCIPLE
Henry
Adams made one more grand synthesis attempt before Lieber laid the main path to
guilded age social sciences. He used
Sir Henry Maines' 1871 discovery of Aryan sanskrit tie to link us as Tuetonic
coming from the cold mideival mountain to the still ocean of science. Fiske did much the same while incorporating
Spencers diversity. But this wedding of
aryan history to natural science hit religious stonewalling and stopped.
It
was picked up and successfully driven home by Lieber who tied the Tuetonic
chain to the methodological premises of histiography, not natural science. Though dead in 1867, his disciples tied all
to historic laws. Historic-politics
tried to maintain the Tuetonic principles of civil liberty, Fearing class
conflict and that we'd become a republic in name only, they sought to crate an
aristocracy of good men in public service.
Woodrow wilson came from this mileau.
These folk sought to strengthen their science by using the critical
historical method of Ranke. Feeling
that from these facts would discern they they the underlying principles of
progress without recourse to philosophy (realism or idealism). Burgess, using this method, decided that the
state was a product of the progressive revelation of human reason through
history. Facts beget political ideals
not yet realized, these become ideals and then laws and institutions. He organized study around political and
economic theory, legal institutions historically and did research on the
comparitive examination of modern political institutions. His hegelian ways led him to republican
virtues as the ultimate (Tuetonically).Tuetonways were fixed like laws of
nature or the constitution, in the advancing spirit of each age. tied to England by Adams we had history, not
divine providence to guide us. Burgess,
Adams and Lieber used this to call for strengthening of republican established
institutions and subordinating the individual to history and community! In the New England fields Adams found the
cooperative husbandry of the German folk villiage. Plymouth wasn't founded by an everyman for himself squatter
sovereignty, but community first. Labor
rebelliousness and selfish management principles come under attack. He liked Drummonds "evolution is the
struggle for others". Burgess said
"only the nations will could transform the ethical feeling of the
individual into rights. Until this
happens the assertion of rights is as an ignorant boast or a disloyal
threat. This comes from a past civil
war person. Individual conscience was
naught when against the national will.
The constitution came from revolutionary and historical expression of
national will. Not legal action. He wanted amending the constitution to be
easier, so he saw change and so was historical, but looked to an eternal
unrealized dream. So we see a blend of
AE as historicism creeps in.
1870s-80s
the rise of Dunbar and Francis walker marked the rise of economics (political
economy) as a separate positivistic discipline. Moving away from Carey's analysis which used science like saying
things were like thermodynamics and all economic failure in history was a
matter of moral failings. They sought
to extract morality. Using positivist
empirical facts they had to face that because of change we were not, by
providence , immune from history.
Francis Walker saw this and that classical economic theory wasn't divine
either. There is room for change and sympathy with workers. The empiricist
strain said no a priori. Hypothetical
and not scientific law. The deductive
method of classicaleconomy simplified and distorted. History showed different circumstances and national character
should be accounted for. We had to
discover subordinate causes of difference.
The worker had to be seen in the present and see his hope in the present
and future and classical was good but it needed competition, not monopoly to
function well.
While
Walker crated a tentative realistic basis, William Graham Sumner justified it
on a more constricted rationalization for AE.
Sumner and Ward created the first compelling tradition of social
sciences in America based on Comte and Spencer. Sociology was to be a science of the laws of history. They showed that property rights and limited
government were fixed in the American republic. We must use historical and statistical induction to get a t the
laws of history. He drifted until the
Railroad strikes of 1877. He said as
crowding increases competition and inequality increase and those at the top
deserve to be there and moral corruption may combat the equalizer of expansion
to fresh lands. we may become an old
country yet and doubted progress. Yet
people here have opportunity because we are a people of contracts not status.
Ward
made the other big sociology attempt of the 1880s. he was a positivist ala comte and said the agent of progress in
the world is advances in knowledge (scientific rationalism was the ultimate). The scottish enlightenment saw progress
caused by economics. American
protestentism and German idealism saw it in religious and moral forces. Ward, White and Sumner saw it in natural
knowlegde. Ward especially attacked the
churches. He constructed his sociology
on scientific rationalism and said folks should "get capital" and
"get education". He was born
poor and educated himself (5 languages) He saw big differences between educated
and uneducated folks. "Happiness
comes from progress, progress by knowledge and knowledge by education" He was like a liberal comte. Science could provide the direction and
order a fragmentaing society needed.
"Sociocracy" would replace politics and government. Whereas Sumner thought societies form came
from natural organic growth and we could accept it or go backwars, Ward
(following comte not Spencer) saw human purpose asoverriding blind native
history. society and culture came from
laws. Scientific laws showed cause and
effect (despite what mill or comte said and he ushered in the new liberalism and
social intervention. This was of huge
import. He escaped positivists
determinism, but kept the idea that society was like physical nature and open
to mechanical intervention. The concept
of change led America to history and then controlling it. He called for social
engineering. He looked at society with
a biological model. Desire and
appetites (preservative, reproductive, aesthetic, moral and intellectual are
the primary motive forces. History is a
chronicle of errors. All suffering
comes from a violation of natural laws through error or ignorance of the
laws. JS Mill was the one that
formulated (for the Anglo world) that human reason can direct human life.
So
in this chapter we went from divine guidance informing natural and historic
order (eternal) into order and discernable in nature and history themselves to
bolster our Liberal republican AE. From
the Tuetonic tradition we come to the gighest form of progress: us. Ward and Walker allowed change and Ward
showed history is not exactly subservient to natural law (biological) but
history was still the cause in the past.
And it could be contained and manipulated by man.
THE THREAT OF SOCIALISM IN
ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY
So
sooner had the new basis of AE been formed than it was torn by the threat of
socialism and open warfare between social scientists emerged. Farmer protests were republican and
egalitarian. Populist and progressives
and socialists could take over. It was
an open question in the 1880s. The
cooperatives had an equally vallid AE as capitalists. republican self governence via cooperatives v.
individualism. Both tried to tie
themselves to American tradition but only the radicals advocated change. The word "un-American" came to be
used. The first peak of this battle was
during the depression and strikes of 1873-7.
The second in the depression of 1885.
The growth of the Knights of Labor and the may 5 1886 Haymarket riot, Pullman 1894, Coxey's army 1894 and
1896 election.
The social scientists who led the drive for a
new political economy were from the same evangelical children WASP New England
cliche that ruled the century. Jews and
Catholics were nearly as discriminated
against as blacks. The clique valued
morals conscience in social, personal and political life, salvation of the
whole community and milennial underpinnings of the American republic
religion. They were also influenced by
German historical economics and the morality of Laissez Faire to some problems. Econ was seen as an ethical as well as a
historical science. John Clark and
Richard Ely were dedicated to the working class since the early 19th AE consensus was based on American liberal
republican institutions providing liberty, relative harmony and equality. Socialist critique pitted liberty against
equality, individual self interest against the common good. When Spenser and Darwin said "nature
red in tooth and claw. It made people
feel to be human was to rise above. They looked to native communal organicism
and democratic collectivism and cooperative socialism for the original liberal
- republican
hope. And these men were hightly influenced by
Darwin.
Clark,
Adams and Ely had millenial socialist hopes for God and us. Ely, as the others,a historical economist,
said classical economic laissez faire was an 18th, early 19th century
thing. And he started a magazine and
organization called The American Ecomonomics Association to combat Sumner and
the conservative heavies (1885)
The
questions were for the new historic school: Did historicism force a new look at
AE? Achange in methods from classical
methods and substance? What of
ethics? Putting classical in its
historic place Ely wanted few inductions from more carefully scrutinized
facts. Within the historicist movement
they had sharp disagreeements but decided airing them in public was bad for all
concerned (the profession). The type
comps the historicists (deductive) v. the classical economists (inductive)
decided not to fight so fiercly. All
had to disassociate from the word socialism.
Historicists vied for applying economics to specific problems. Classicists said perhaps the economists
could tell the politician what was impossible, but excluded positive
action. Mill said the art of economics
was different from application. Adams
and historicists said the split between "art" and
"practice" was artificial.
Ely said things had to be done and we must also, platonically, work to a
perfect future. This required values
and (so classicists excluded) Christian idealism could assume this role. Classicists thought their vision moral, but
their professionalism rested on objectivity (in their minds). The Haymarket riot of 1886 sent some running
from implications of socialism. Ely and
Adams held out longest, but professional threats reigned them in. The AEA had end its bar against classical
economists and Ely was relieved of his leadership position.
Clark
was the most talented of the new historicist economists, but retreated. In doing so he added to and created
marginalist economic theory and he created the diminishing returns and vast
buyers determine value as seen in price ideas.
He thought, as England had transitioned past acrimony America would get
unions and all would stabilizeand the historicism view would atrophy. He also developed the idea that all recieve
due to the value they add and that competition will make profit shrink and that
economics distributed social goods and is therefore good. This gave a better moral backing for Laissez
Faire than classical's self interest and competition are good the definition of
value by labor or an economy driven by capital accumulation, Clark saw that the
vast pool of skilled poor paying jobs created folk who wouldn't go up and bound
the educated and the rich. This for him
was republican and would facilitate enough goods so that strife wouldn't
result. He put AE again on an eternaal
changeless course as seen by James Harrington to be beyond history as he gave
some moral legitimacy to it. Society
would change some but his basic economic laws wouldn't. Again like the wave of an ocean.
The
sociologists quarrel:Small v. Giddings.
Sociology was the last develope social science. It got into universities in the 1880s. Albion Small in 1892 got the first chair of
sociology in the country. Giddings
helped Clark with his marginalist theories.
Small (a preacher) was not convinced by the solemn conclusions drawn
from facts of AE. He had millenial
hopes and thought sociology the means to the goal of a Christian Kingdom. He said sociology hat three parts 1) Descriptive
sociology was used to separate the
permanent from the transient features of society 2) Then it must correlate all
positive knowledge to deal with the social forces: health, wealth , sociablity,
knowledge beauty and righteousness and the equilibrium of a perfet society
(statical sociology). Then 3) was to
investigate how to turn the actual into the ideal (dynamic sociology). So the study for the mutuality of society and
personal realization of all of its members.
Hegelian "conventionality is the thesis, socialism is the
antithesis and sociology is the synthesis.
Professionally he had to avoid any pro socialism statements. But he was proud of his reform work (he
helped negotiate the pullman strike. He
was in touch with business leaders and clerics and solicited charity) But real change had to wait till the science
of society produced more information.
The ethical sociologist was more prescriptive than descriptive. But he had to be cautious and said "the
zealot prophets of righteousness were doing more harm than good" and that
"if institutions are defective they are the reflection of defective social
knowledge.
Franklin
Giddings produced a positivistic philosophy of history that identified the
actual and the ideal. He found
tremendous sympathy with Spencer and classical economy. So he believed in a slow evolution towards
the better with capitalism. He was
friends with John Clark. He thought
there no special ethical function in science.
Economics for example could predict future trendds. Whether this is ethical or not isn't
important. An evolutionary positivist,
he wanted to find the natural , social and sexual types that survived. Extremes in wealth were bad for
survival. We , fortunately, have a dilligent ethic "from the simple
democracies of rural America"And this left its mark on larger society and
must be preserved. The need for moral
continuity led him to why folks are social.
he found the secret of society was association in which like was
attracted to like. Would association
and industrialism crash our our
fiber? Where Small thought sociology
fundamental because comprehensive because it incorporated elementary psych
principles and their social transformations. The psych to the real without
history. This "sociology" was
a far from agreed upon thang. So the
battle was historic and inductive battled now and deductive. Between describing ethically what was and
what should vev. describing what is.
Small was trying to be couth and guard his job but after McCarthying
Bemis because mor radical and attacked Giddings for his trying to stick with
facts and avoid subjectivity as a worship of science. "Scholars are shirkers unless they grapple with problems in
society. Thats what they support us
for." But after 1896s election he
reversed himself again. The producers
democracies and cooperative commonwealth gave way to reaction. Small changed from prescribing the ideal to
what people actually want. The
description or discovery of solutions was for sociology. But for a discovery to be real most men must
agree to it. If most don't want equal
distribution it isn't "real" and its insane to agitate for it, Ely
too saw the weight of history.
PART III
PROGRESSIVE SOCIAL SCIENCE
1896-1914
ch5 THE LIBERAL REVISION OF
EXCEPTIONALISM
After
the election of 1896 and depression of 1897 the economy picked up. After the knights collapsed the AFL took
over. Yet in the worst of 1897 it only
had 5% of the working class in its ranks.
They spoke for older Europeans as new immigrants flooded in. But the IWW declared class warfare in the
name of anarcho-syndicalism. Eugene
Debs got 1 milllion votes in 1912 and so the threat of socialism carried over
into the new century. The way of
dealing with it changed though.
Political reform minded independents made changes that undermined
political parties and political sufferage creating the progressive era and
giving social scientists room to reform and run for office and advise
government. They had the balancing act of being against the
conservatives and the socialists.
Scientific racism grew and conservative reaction to radicalsim created
division. Walker, Francis documented
the higher birthrate of recent immigrants and lower rate of natives meant the
improving effect of higher wages would allow us to escape the Malthusian trap
in 1884. But in 1890they made him call
for immigration reform. In the
progressive era the traditional American fear of decay focused on imigrants. This cut across the division between
positivists and historicists. Social
discord was also agravated by the breakdown of Victorian gender roles. The poor worked and the rich wanted
sufferage. Divorce went up and
sociologists were astute to the changes wrought by industrialism (value crisis)
well described by Small (all seemed questionable). And classes, regions and ethnic groups become aware of its values
being opposed by others of lower development (the South has blacks, temperance
drunks, organized labor scabs, the city slums). The destructive side of American pluralism fueled the new liberal
search for a social ethic. Dewey
"one can hardly believe there has been a revolution in all history so
rapid, so extensive, so complete."
In reacftion the old AE's apocalyptic gilded age response gave into
liberal historicism. We looked to the
future. But though our future was no
longer altogether exceptional, we we untied progress from natural law (which
says that most nations fail to progress) and attached ourself to a utopian
ideal with us at the forefront it also survived in the need to deny class conflict and the flight
from history to nature where science promised control. Seligman, a jew, in 1905 "America is
leading the world and showing other countries what stages they have still to traverse".
And the grafting of the modern industrial society on "persistent primitive
stock" made the present confusing.
Croly's 1909 The Promise of American Life is the representative text of
the progressive movement. It also
changes AE. The nationalist view of
America continues but the liberal republic idea thins. Individuals rationally involved voluntary
association (not owning resources of production) made the US. By the turn of the country Adam Smith's
sympathy and Clark's "invisible hand" were supplementing this
harmony. The left and right mystified
as they tried to reconcile social harmony and possesive individualism.
Psychology played a central role in social sciences
from their inception. Hume had urged a
search for universal consistences and variation in human nature and Mill
reaffirmed the vasis for the moral sciences.
At a distance historic politics were said to rest on psychological
principles classical economics was similar and marginalism claimed
utilitarianism. Critics used
psychology assumptions too. So in 1890
the emergence of functional psychology implications for social science were
expored. Functional psych was developed
by Dewey and James and Baklwin and studies of perception and attention coming
from labs. But it owed its first
inspiration to Darwin. The mind was an
organ of adaptation so 1) mind was active purpose agent in transactions with
the environment and 2) it always sought to adjust to a changing social
environment from 1) a will that could change the environment to rational
specifications and from 2) a socialized individual down to the rational
consensus adjustment enforced. Smith
and Spencer saw progress in economics.
The french model put reason behind social progress and JS Mill's 1859
"On Liberty" essay gave reason a social setting. Progress comes from creative minds that
challenged the norm. After Darwin these
classic models of liberal history were reshaped into evolution via adaptation
and natural selection. Dewey told his
students biology has now transfered its ideas to economics. Economic, social and scientific invention
became rational responses to a changing environment or selection. Karl Pearson's grammar of Science"
promised objective things to agree upon amongst social fragmentation via
objectivity and banishing metaphysics and bias. But some, like Small, recognmized the need for ethics. meanwhile, the profession still had to show
its merit though imperialism provided a big boom in cultural experts. But until the 20s the audience was
respectable upper and middle class students and they remained ever concerned
about seeming professional. But in
being so wider ranges of opinions would be tolerated. Theprofessionalization can be seen as reflecting on decentralized
capitalist and middle class supported university system and the English aristocrats
resisted expansion and Germany and Franch universities were state
controlled. In Europe social sciences
were kept under philosophy and history mostly (both were underdeveloped in the
US) and the same powers that allowed these to emerge on their own allowed
separation. But professionalism kept
some continuity.
Dewey
represents the still porous nature of social sciences at this juncture (a
philosopher with training in psychology wanting to be a social sciences). His pragmatism emerged directly from the
gilded age crisis of AE and revised the exceptionalist heritage to embody the
new liberal and historicist awareness of change (yet this response was linked
to the exceptionalist heritage. He
loved democracy as an organic whole destroying dualism (a pet peave) and
uniting the individual and the social organization. Not the loss but gain of selfhood. The idea of destroying democracy ends the distinction between
church and state. While young at
University of Michigan he said "ethics as political science and political
science as ethics", there he and
the Ford brothers edited and wrote for "Thought News". in it , according to N. Coughlan, Dewey had
a breakthrough: Philosophy is like science, an inquiry into experience and experience can be understood by an
examination of action via the psycho-physical act of thinking and the
socio-historical model of progress. The
balance of individual and history in 'type-action" is Hegel's
phenomenology of the mind and spirit which (I think) knit together subjectivity,
objectivity , individual-society, past-future.
He put this on Darwin he saw the mind
as an organism of adaptation.
Truth the solution that most fully resolved strain or friction. No difference between truth and values (all
relative to changing experience). Oughtness: the bad act partial and the good
complete. All the conditions and the
whole self involved the individual growing, realized in a larger
community. We cannot extract fixed
standards infact, only if freed from absolutes can we act responsibly in the
uncertainty of history. This discordant
world of harmonization was coming out of conflict and (without civic humanism,
christian or idealist language) Democracy remained the towards which history
moved. Relativity with teleology. Reconstructing his inherited ideals along naturalistic and historicist basises
he had FAITH in the millennial vision.
Deweys pragmatism was a new liberal philosophy like moderate Christian gilded age
socialists he saw society as a family community whose differences were
harmonized by common interest. But he
didn't see it now. " democracy is
an ideal of the future, not a starting point.""in this respect
society is still a sound aristocrat.
What is meant in detail by a democracy of wealth we shall not know until
it is more a reality than now" His
fling with radicalism was brief knowing we must accept the "established
facts of life" mediating between
laissez-faire and socialist radicalism science democracy and industrialism were
his machined of progress. The modern
individual is and end in himself in democracy.
If dewey drew together indivudualists and organicist traditions in an
effort to socialize liberalism. He
believed (like Spencer) that the struggle for existence, competition and
division of labor were creating functional interdependence. interdependence byond Spencer it showed him
a social process of intelligence, education and government action that mediated
and completed social action derived from the economic. he specifically added the "social
sensorium" a mediating realm of conscious interaction of individuals and
by language. Through it individual
consciousness became social. We define
and accomodate our actions to others. A
harmonious society could not be achieved until individuals are fully socialized. The falsity of Anarchy is in not seeing how
hard it is to bring ones interest into harmony with the shole. On one level he is redefining individualism,
on another , he is a hegelian exceptionalist.
All opposition between the individual and the social is a phase in
apparent historical progress.
George
herbert Mead was his collaborator. He
tied his Christian social sympathies to the liberal economy also "the
telegraph and land motive are the great spiritual agents of society and we must
deal with the real. Labor orginizing
for higher wages and immediate conditions is good. Propogandizing for a socialist future is bad. We cannot anticipate change, just now.
But
his example showed america wasn't changing.
We live in change he said and implied the liberal world forever.
CH 6 MARGINALISM AND
HISTORICISM IN ECONOMICS
Three
models emergerd after the guilded age:
Marginalism, the liberal econ interpretation of history and Veblen's
socialist historico-evolutionary economics.
The
synthesis of marginalism and classicism was facilitated by Alfred Marshall's
1890 Principles of Economics. It did
show that supply and demand could be affected by differing bargaining strengths
and labor and capital (this allowed marginalists to accept some liberal reform.
Historians like to say marginalism beat
classical out cause it was seen as more scientific , less metaphysical. This also explains it being discovered at
the same time in three different countries.
But its development was affected by historical peculiarities in Germany
and France. It was resisted well into
this century. It seem to atomistically
violate the indivisible totality of the historical world. It also appeared at a time when laissez
Faire gave workers no hope outside the neo-malthusian preachings of
abstinence. Marxist labor theory of
value was attacking so the founders of marginalism had to revise the theory of
value. So perhaps this was its great
attraction. Especially in the US where
the fate of labor was threatening AE.
Many later proponents were embarassed by Clarks overt sentimentalism and
moralism and his tying it to natural law.
It should be remembered though, that the disengaged version taken was
politically relevant and ideologically committed. And polarization had divided the discipline. But it encoded individualism. Fisher brought it to America and graphed it
to Sumner's positivism and connected it with double entry bookkeeping making it
totally math. After an illness he came
back and started to lookat the health of society, Sumners self interest ckuld
lead to evil. Its "natural law'
should be side stepped. He favored
child labor legislation etc. And public
health issues as a social support for personal morality. Fetter also hipped on these said they are
objective evils and math showed immigration undercutting labor was too. Marginalism also offered continuity n the
face of change. Clark had a static and
dynamicmodel of economics. Basic
components of static;population, capital, technology, organization of
production and consumer wants defined the boundaries within which dynamic
changes happened. Dynanism showed
progress on a confined trajectory.
Fisher just ignored history as a mytery. He was a fatalist. We
can't know what or why, just approve what is.
As science expains the conditions, what would happen under a certain
circumstance (not what did or does happen). Economics makes laws that are
circumstantial but always true in them.
We need normative economics (to distinfush the real from the ideal) but
these are only glitches from the provisional program.
Seligman
also concocted a marginalist theory that helped tie the gap between
marginalists and liberal historicists.
A gilded ager for reform, but not socialism He grafted a liberal end on
laws and evolution being a function of economics. And, as sure as competition and and capitalism are now necessary,
equality and harmony will someday emerge from it and the moral, during
abundance, will override economics!
This future was like Mill's stationary state but less modest. Fetter also bridged the same gap sying
thought marginalism created values so did lawmaking collective action and
social institions. Those who moved from
liberal historicism blamed histtrical evolution, those moving from marginalism
blamed inequality on moreal failings.
Seligman used Clarks concept of value being found by the aggregate, not
individual want helped --- (Amer)??--- bolster the organic view he said what
society wants must be ethical and good for business. history did control the market but it was inextricable from the
market itself. He made room for human
initiative in his historical determinism with human actions determining
political and ethical life. He
predicted social security and minimum wage laws and said the economist belongs
on the moving edge of historical progress.
Young
and Adams revised Ely's textbook and it (with more a liberal history and less
of marginalist view was the number one selling textbook until WWII) It said the
market was the best determiner of value but then pointed out where it wasn't
true and said organized collective activity is good that there is no
preestablished harmony between history, economy and ethical judgement. Should the market not ethical ideals only
control historical action? It still had
too much apocolypse ala Ely for some.
Seligman responded to Halley saying economists must forsake academia and
become activists because an aristocracy isneeded by saying that visions of
economy and its popularity is due to class interests. Classical rose with the commercial industrial folk it
served. Economic theory will again be
popular only if it can represent all classes.
Hadley said economists should talk to the president. Seligman said the people in general John
Commons said they must speak to a class because speaking to all is status quo
and ineffective. All economists speak
for a class. If elections were due to
economic level and not region we'd see it.
Economists represent classes now, not some Seligman future. Seligman said we must try to represent all.
Patten
is the pastor saint of the inability to graft a social ethic onto
capitalism. He said progress was more
important than equality and that the weak and unable to adapt should be killed. A difficulty for historico-economists was
the sad state of contemporary history.
It was particularistic and hostile to generalizations. Commons saw how business leaders were
organizing and thought others must too (laborers). And he did the first great history of laabor and decided that our
labor organization was unique as it developed without so much cover of races, armies, guilds or prelates, but
workers had organized before there were factories. History moved to the AFL with its class consiousness limited to
wage and job consciousness. The AE
independent citizen working a bargaining process without predetermined
harmony. Immigrants were old world and
the old world traits inconpacitate one for self-government. Commmons mixed radicalism and AE
traditionalism but the biggest challeng to marginalist dominance came from
Thorsten Veblen. He connected
evolution to socialism to a democratic reading of AE with his "industrial
republic of the socialist" idea.
He saw the tradition of freedom in English speakers being manifest in
this (and contemporaneously in Coxey's army .
It meant the nationalization of industry in a democracy. He, like Patten, saw consumption as
central. But Patten saw it moderating
class consciousness Veblen thought it
created class conflict and thought we need a "theory of culture". Therefore in need of a psychology , he
appeared to equate Kan't regulative principle of the reflective judgement with
Charles Pierces' guiding principle of inference. It determines us, given certain premises to draw one inference
rather than another. This is a habit of
the mind (sayeth Pierce). Veblen said
the habits of the mind came from history.
he agreed with Marxs italisan revisionists that material conditions ony
affect history by affecting the individuals habitual perception of things. He also believed in functional psychology
and racial anthropology. As history
gets goin tools are invented creating new habits of thought and work. The exploitive force of hunting look at the rest as degraded and therefore
women were oppressed, thenin fuedalism class emerges and owners were a leisure
class that collected art for its uselessness.
Industrial bosses put conspicuous consumption over conspicuous
leisure. This behavior filters down to
the working class and it creates a false consciousness. But the machine process and science were
giving workers impersonal matter-of-fact habits of thoght. An important idea of his was distinguishing
between industrial and pecuniary functions.
He saw a shift in his 'captains of industry" from caring about
money to credit and traced busingess
cycles to them bidding up the value of money beyond the real worth. This slammed marginalism. this inefficiency would lead to extinction
and socialism. Classical
marginalism sucked economics should be
historic! The change of sustenance and
thus labor in process and then-?_?them., he said, based on evolution, his
historical phase eventually clashed with his evolutionary positivism phase (In
which he saw all life as an organism with natural selection). He didn't say if socialism would tiumph for
sure, but he thought science would. He
traced science to "idle curiosity' and now it is seen as cause and effect,
but its idol and playful purpose remained in modern humanist scholarship. he tried to critique the pragmatist view of
science and stance and said his categories were impartial. This stance became in the generation to
follow.
CH 7 - TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGY OF
SOCIAL CONTROL
Sumner
had originally argued that society was on a fixed course determined by natural
selection and that reason nor morality oculd change it. Ward had said intervention could shape the
future. Giddings had stressed survival
and selection but what was selected was determined by society. Anyways, in 1906 the first meeting of the
American Sociological Society heralded the end of radical splintering. With Ward as President and Sumner as V-
President, they sought common ground towards liberal plitics and liberal
exceptionalism for the profession.
Sumner did a study on folkways and mores. Folkways are somewhat fatalistic. Mores are quasi-rational
standards of ethics open to some modification science critical will and
intelligence could get us change from the causality of history. Sumner hinted in compromise. Small said
all can agree that social evolution is different from evolution
plain. They also accomodated other
social sciences. Particularily
economics. Small's original sociology
was an attack on classical economics, bringing ethics in economics. Economics was a subsidiary of
sociology. Many economists jabbed at
sociology. But they didn't interfere
with eachother. All of the new
profession sociology accepted capitalism, republicanism and social
differentiation. Rejecting determinism,
of course, they stressed the broad determinants in life that they were
especially qualified to understant.
Smalls
Chicago and Biddings Columbia
Small
wanted to define sociology. First he
did so as the study of goups in association, conflict and accomodation. As he thought such struggles centered
anround wants or "interests" and those were the end the means
gathered around, the units of soccial value and action, the interests must be
put in harmony and this categorization of human nature and the relation to the
ends was the role of sociology. His
followers and coworkers at Chicago studied local charity (the hull house). Dewey and mead were amongst these. These studies brought maps into sociology
. They did empirical studies too,
without analysis (they thought it would stir the public conscience to
action. Smalls ambiguity keeps him
being properly called the Chicago method founder. But Gidding... Gollowing
Ernst Mach he said theories were inderect scientific descriptions allowing us
to group large combinations of facts.
They got heavily into statistics.
He called this inductive sociology.
He tried to quantify sociopsychological types, consciousness of types
and other vagueries. They went away but
categories and stats didn't. Worried
about splintering he measured peoples and degrees of sympathy and had a
collapse in 1912. His reliace on
numbers was in proportion to his fear of fragmentation. He did stats but many of his students took
up Small's historico-evolutionary bent.
The liberal Expeptionalist
Sociology of Ross and Cooley
Both
came to sociology from economics to resolve the guilded age crisis in AE. Their solutions draw sociology towards the
socio-psychological processes. Ross
took the first steps with articles and then a book called social control. Based on the idea that there is a conflict between
the individual and society so society must modify individual feelings, ideas
and behavior. Ther formal and
informalmeans were called social control.
He took this towards socialism and had a breakdown in 1892.He was also
very concerned with individuals in in their contestwith society. He had no millenial hope to ground himself
on, was literally orphaned, took to German agnosticism and marginalism by which
he showed no formal standard of equality could be fair to all and his social
control controlled private property and capitalism too. Someone will always be unhappy. So equality is impossible , but we used need
control. In this he straddled socialsim
and capitalism. He especially didn't
know how aryans could be controlled. He
liked the equality that had existed in the California mining communities. But industrial progress forced rigidity that
subverts "Arcadian" ways. The
drying of social mobility is to fear.
Growth was the key to upward potential.
He as others contrasted small communities with human values with big
anonymous societies and their Anomie (Durkheim). Communal control is natural. Societal ones, artificial ones. Social controls were fragile and may not
grow as fast as needed and, conversely, the spirit on and up needed to be kept
from stifling. Here the hope was the
well spring of Aryan esprit.His emphasis on control was applied to monopolies
in society sapping initiative and put
emphasis on what bonds us in sociology.
'socialized" and "socialization" appeared. This nexus between society and the
individual became key. Though Mill used
the term "social control" first he used it to fight it ie laissez
faire should be extended to free social choice. Ross used it for liberal control ends. The actions of capitalism and structural changes over time faded
as the paths to understand make harmony.
Though ross wasn't blind to history and the lack of perfect control or
nonexistence of one system for all seasons.
The problem seemed predominantly a psychological one. Giddings found a psychohitch in Adam Smith's
"sympathies" (An idea he got from Hume). Democracy critics had used it in Europe in the ideas of
"imitation" and the crowd. Ross
saw social tradition and sanction, not reward and punishment as effective. Rosss looked at imitation in crowds and
studied conflict resolution. The key to
nationalism and progress was discussion.
But he didn't think Tardes' resemblence alone would resolve conflict.
(john press wonders if this is where the boy scouts came from) Our change was
so fast this was impossible. And
conflict is eternal. His second book
was called "social psychology".
Cooley
had less trouble reconciling the individualistic and organicist impulses within
himself, sanguine about America and influential in sociology becoming
psychological. He framed the clash of
capitalism and socialism as being over the merit of competition. He distrusted socialism and set out to betterment of ideals. Influenced in 1893 , by Dewey he also
thought unity, association and sympathy advanced with competition
differentiation and individuation. And
that competition could be elevated by public sentiment to higher ideals. This required contact between peoples
((progress) Dewey said) Cooley said society is an aggregate of individuals who
are not seperable , but of one thing and that thing is mental. We know ourselves only through intercourse
with others. We appear in the
"looking glass" (mirror) self.
The individual is "all social". One who entertains the
thoughts of others cannot deny them justice.
We must enlarge sympathy.
"virtue is exerting the imagination. Fusing the organisism of Dewey and functional psychologist and
James' stream of consciousness came easily to a man who mostly lived in his own
thoughts. But removing psychological
barriers to socialization was ony one half the battle. Society is shaped by history and
organization. Human nature was
developed in primary groups "family, childhood playgoups and community
elders". Democracy and
Christianity grew from lessons taught by the eternal primary group. The task of mankind was to extend the ideals
of the primary group to all of mankind.
The task ahead is to become like children in a family. America's unadulterated nature is far on the
way, due to our tuetonic stock and lack of history. Cooley was the progressive era complement to Sumner in the
guilded age. Sumner spelled out tenets
of possesive individualism. Cooley the
new liberal organicism. Just as Sumner
was a repository for libertarians against liberalism , Cooley bolstered the new
idealized American Democracy.
The
meanings of social control. It now
usually means class domination but it meant a normative view of capitalist
society when that was seriously contested.
Not class, but social control legitimated by nature herself. Social control is natural in that man is
social. Idealists social scientists
erased the conflict between society and the individual. If we bring the social side of man out it
can be the instrument of control. Its
not coercive, but part of self realization.
Do individuals control society or visa versa? John Dewey furthered the sociologist tendency to blur power
issues by collapsing political into social categories in his poli sci lectures
of 1893. He said sovereignty is an
expression of the organic unity of society.
Rights and authority rest on this.
They don't equate social control with the liberalrepublican distrust of
power or themselves as controllers by deflection onto nature. So Gramsci's marxist analysis misses
thesubtlety. These aren't capitalist,
but academic social scientist controllers.
Keppers of the AE ideal. The
ideas of social control are a direct heir of the Whiggish ideal of
subordinating the individual rights to a greater government definition of
public good. Applied originally against
radical workers, it now cut against acquisitive capitalists. The control went both ways and the users
wanted to protect America and lead it to its ideals. They were concience as well as validator of society.
Much
American Soc Sci was to stop or control history. This generation used, not
grace or reason, but the positivist use of science. Only it now seemed destine to escape the tarnish of history. It offered prediction and control. Charles Cooley for one, was hostile to this
vision. He saw social science as art,
not science. But the technocratic
vision did start to take hold in the progressive era, as seen in Ross'
work. Ross ends his discussion of
social control with excitement of power at having discovered a secret of social
control. He feared its use in the wrong
hands by bad folk. So knowledge of it
was to be limited. The old elites
vision was narrow. The new looked at
society as a whole. It should be
esoteric to beobscured from the greedy.
Ethical conflicts Ross said
"would end upon getting scientific answers. Not to raise but, solve issues".
Dewey
was one of Ross' big proponents.
Saying, though , philosophy whould be a social science and supporting
Ross' central premise, that positivist knowledge could give social scientists
rational control over society and history.
Dewey said philosophy must henceforth be a method of science and its
field of interest chiefly "psychology and social ethics, including the
latter term all the relative concrete social sciences, so far as they may give
guidance to conduct. He said the
methods of physical science have not yet been fully applied to life. Because physical science could see things as
interconnected parts in a mechanism.
Where Dewey differd from Ross and so many other social scientists was
his belief in democracy. He began to
think of science as a refined form of the pragmatic intelligence, the model of
how we think. He wanted to erase
divisions and so overlooked detals like wide differences. His vision of positivistic knowledge and
schools as great factories clashed with democracy. Both Dewey and Ross' ideas of social control are soft when
compared to those that come after WWI.
Except
Sumner, post gilded age social scientists acknowledged change and tried to
bring AE into it by seeing it as a transition and denying clas conflict. Society was moving to liberal harmony: an increasingly peaceful rational and
ethical adjustment of interests. That
was the message of Small, Giddings, Ross and Cooley. Social Control was a tool to ease the transformation. They had ambitions of technocratic
benevolent control. Like European
sociologists reshaped history into the two steps 1) community centered traditional
and 2)modern differentiated society.
But in Europe it was done with knowledge of history. Here it was used after the guilded age
crisis to trojan horse in AE. Fear of
decline and love of vitality sent Ross to "American Creed" concept. Sociologists entered the gilded age less
mature than economists, So whereas economics came out with the clarity of
neo-classicism, sociology didn't. But
they established a good foothold in academia and gave direction to research and
theory. Sociology didn't flourish in
England until after WWII. Their sence
of history didn't need to legitimate modern society. Instead of ideological invention they made social workers. They saved their ideological inventiveness
for anthropology. This grooved with
their imperial role. The immigrant
crisis came after sociology, so not diversity within, but the need for national
identity is the face of transformation (our decentralized university system
helped too).
CH 8 FROM HISORICO-POLITICS
TO POLITICAL SCIENCE
Whilst
economics and sociology played a two stage drama of crisis and liberal revision
in the guilded age (under the threat of socialism, which informed its
solutions) The challenger to the gentry founders of historico-politics was
slower and projected a more moderate vision of AE. The younger generation in HP (historico-politics) was also born in
the 1850s and 60s but was more conservative.
Disaffection in sociology and economics came from egalitarian
shortcomings in HP it came from elitest disillusionment with democracy. They only saught a liberal historicist
revision of AE, not radical transformation.
Sociology and Economics drew those with radical sentiments seeking to do
things . Not from evangelical piety,
millenial backgrounds, but from business and political backgrounds were their
fathers. Only Osgood, Wilson, andrews
and Macy were exceptions. But they all
stood firm in the whig tradition of limited democracy that dominated HP from
the early 19th century. In the gilded
age they showed limited sympathy for the workers and none for socialism. W. Wilson said he had always been a federalist. The main teachers were Burgess at Columbia
and less conservative James and Penn and Patten at John Hopskins. The younger generations challenge to their
gentry predecessors was due to a deeper commitment to historicism and
realism. Only wilson was an advocate of
romantic epistemology that allied history and political science with
literature. They got their sense of
what science demanded from the Rankean program for historical science. They used induction from the observed facts
and skepticism about preformed generalizations. They realized that each generation must rewrite history, but saw
this as a progression of progress and didn't apply historicism to their
ideals. No infighting brought it to
their attention.
The
new HP the articulated came from a crisis of AE and 1) decided that grounding
things in tuetonics was ridiculous and should be stopped. The freedom of past peoles was different
from that of a free citizen and while they're is no straight changeless Code of
morality, there is slow organic progress.
Change , more, conservative and practical was thus allowed.
Perhaps
the most notable statement about republican preservation through Burkean
historicism was Ford's. He showed
colonical American politics to be an offshoot of aristocratic English society
and American ideas founded in Whig politics.
The constitution was a conservative reaction of the gentry class against democratic and anarchistic
forces. The party system too had these
roots. But political contest soon led
them to seek popular support and so they domocratized politics. The party system coordinated the different
branches of govt. The constitution had
separated. While showing the
constitution as conservative, development does happen. He said that while our politics may be corrupt,
resources of probiby, intelligence and skill (heoic qualities which are the
peculiar claim of militancy) were still present.
Historicism
and realism in history and politics.
The attck on the elders static AE occupied the whole younger generation
but soon they split into two groups.
One group emphasizing politics one history in their joint task of
finding in history viable principles for historical action. The group that sought it in history took to
Rankean documentation and felt that analysis couldn't be eternal but for a
particular time only. And realistic
historicism also provided knowledge of social history. Jameson's look into the revolution showed it
was social and democratic, not just a contrivance by whig enlightened folk and
this scared him. Andrew also liked
social history and found an acceptable outlet for it in liberal
histiography. Saying the meanings of
history apply to this present day (as Jameson't social look into democracy had
implications for Jacksonian democracy).
Andrewsgot prescriptions for now from very detailed study of European
and early american history . But
Andrews still based his history on the Anglo English Spirit being
transplanted. Turner was the first to
base an account of AE on economic and social foundations. He put the fronteir (not the germ theory0 up
as the reason we is who we is. When in
1890 the frontier was closed his theory transcribed the crisis in national
ideology into the objective terms of histiography and people took notice of
him. Free land created our character,
democracy this economic power secured our political power. As an heir to mugwumpism he also saw
problems in this character; strong selfish individualism intolerant of
administrative experience or education.
The populists were the latest frontier primitives and radicals. He said they would pass as they adjusted to
reality and consigned the frontier effect to the past. HE couldn't easily kill us so he was for
imperialism oversees and said that this history would continue to inspire
us. He stated that the frontier being a
land with no history was a great place to trace the evolution of mankind from
the start up. He kept looking for
geographical determinsism that would put our land in us destpite
backgroung. To get an AE based on fusing
history and natural, it worked in rhetoric, but not in historical terms. His frontier thesis was the first fruit of
an attempt to creat a "new history" animated and stunted by AE. The first from the effort to reconceptualize
our whole past in liberal terms.
History found our AE in natural encounters with nature. Not our ideas or social structures brought
over from England. It made
individualism THE stand alone quality of Americans.
Group
two wanted to use realistic historicism a different way. These were the politics students bent on
hitorical accurracy. Goodnow said he
wanted to show political conditions in formal government is not the same as the
actual. History provided the key to
realistic analysis. Historical realism
was turned to the study of political
parties, administration and city government (the black sheep of American
politics). Their mugwump predecessors
understood problems of municipal politics but saw them as deviations from the
norm. The younger saw them as
legitimate areas of study. But in as
far as they saw the system of divided powers undercutting American politics
they were the same. Woodrow Wilson's
"Congression Government" noted congressional dominance was unintended
but good and illustrated the universal principle of institutional change. He didn't like the diffusion of power by
parties and liked parliamentary stuff more.
Destructive effect (bad) v. concentrating authority (good) was a theme
of this group. He echoed Napoleon and
Jeremy Bentham's themes concerning parse unhampered authoriy. Goodnow said we must reduce the number of
folk in city government. Give the mayor
and city council power. There are 2
primary functions in government expression and execution of the peoples
will. Execution had to be separate from
politics. The new bent towards realism
was , of course, not perfect, it still relied on secondary sources sometimes
and saw with prejudice unexamined. They
saw government as organic with a natural organic aristocracy and could see the
strong government curtail striking workers and capitalists both. But the desire to contain democracy was a
more powerful theme. Democracy is
suited to ideal conditions of human life only.
Democracy in America means the power to veto and change party leaders,
not the power to determin policies.
Their work set an opening for capitalist views of managed government by
business principles and for the post war theories of technocratic expert
governance. But the strongest theme
wasn't to give givernment tot he capitalists but to themselves. The gentry program of training a class of
educated leaders of expert civil servants came to center on the study of
administration. Like social control for
sociologists and economists. And
Whiggishly , in order to stem post war disorder and industrial disorder their
writings emphasized the power of the state as they looked at its workingsThey
didn't like the absolute individualism of the "social contract"
within this framework the most basic disagreement was over the epistmological
basis oftheory. Willoughsby argued for
the supremecy of the "essential nature' as opposed to the "mere
appearance of political institutions.
Political theory deduced theories of universal applicability. History didn't produce new truths just
errors missed by pure speculative thought.
His type lost and after WWI drifted into international law Most said
theory changed with history and displayed little connection to fact. All books were criticized for a lack of
information and too much theorizing.
Professional
Divisions: there was no sharp political
division that caused acrimony. Herbert
Baxter Adams didn't like the brutal criticism in German Universities and so
monstly ignored attacks on his germ theory.
He turned his energy to the
study of American schools and tried a
little to defend his concept of history as past politics. In 1903 the political scientists
professional group, The American Political Science Association (APSA) was
formed for the more systematic collection and exchange of information on legislation
at different levels of government. It
wasn't contentious. It did divide
though between historians and political scientists. Our university system, again, allowed and rewarded specialization
giving freedom and status. And
historians out numbered. This increased
tension. The flare-ups were over who
would clasim which intellectual doman.
Ahead of the AHA said history "is the name of the residuum which
has been left when one group of facts after another has been taken possesion of
by some science." When young
historians reviewed political scientists history writing they tore it up.
By
the 1890s there was also division based on purity. The historians thought the search for political norms and
involvement in contemporary politics blurred their vision. We should study history for its own sake
with an eye towards truth. Stephens
called for a break with politicos.
Historians do history and political scientists stick to contemporary
things. Andrew wanted a less steep
break. Historians should begin by
studying something something that doesn't interest them (for objectiviety ) and end by showing its
relevance to today. Macy, a political
scientist said past events aren't objectively understood by priveledged
historians rather what is important about them is what is believed about them
today. And if historicism meant
the past could no longer be
unequivically by linked to the present and future it can't serve as a basis for
action and should be left behind. The
ground of history must be left to search for political norms.
Goodnow
opened his book with the idea that the two functions in government were from
the nature of humanity and government as an organism. And he studied for prescriptive ends and needed a more absolute
basis for what history ought to be than history could provide. Wilson also reported to universal claims
when history could not secure his primary norm. Wilson turned to anthropology and sociology to determine the
natural limits to state action. This
highlighted the attraction science was starting to have for american political
science.
The
scientific aspiration in political science comes from the drive to make poli
sci an independent science. Ford was
one of the two biggies puching this. He
said there are many different forms of government other than Western ones we
must study the nature of political outhority no matter what forms it
takes. In his search for norms he read
Darwin as applying to the group not the individual since government is an
organism we can study its viability in evolutionary terms. The individual is a subset of the
state. This was a traditional norm from
100 years of Whiggism that used no history.
Abbot Lowell also rejected history with scientific natural law. By bringing it (as Giddings for sociology)
to statistics. (He read lots ofthe disciple of English philosopical and legal
positivist Oliver Wendel Holmes Jr. He soon also was against German political
science with its conflation of law and morality. We needed more inductive studies. He lked our system ineffective , not at all like England and
Wilsons parliament ideas. Our
extralegal institutions of party were in accord with our animajoritarian
history. He did a cross cultural statistical analysis of the
US and eEngland. He called himself a professor
of "existing political systems".
History was a repository of the relatively unchanging qualities of human
nature. Though doomed to be inexact,
scientific , not historic realism, should be its orientation (He said as the
1920 APSA president. We must abserve
public life not libraries. History and
abstractions are useless. He could
follow this strategy because he trusted the the natural course of historical
evolution to sustain AE.
James
Bryce observed and regretted the tendancy of American political scientists to
seek universal principles via natural science.
He liked history and like it polisci can create in the class that leads
a nation the proper temper and attitude towards the questions that from time to
time arise in politics. Broaden views
enlarge sympathies and moderate their narrower passions and give knowledge of
facts and general principles. This word
of caution came partially due to the threat of socialism as did the attempt to
ground it in sciences. Sociology also
went towards science. Both disciplines
overlapped in the field of public opinion (which bost mostly thought more akin
to sentiment than rational reflection.
But Goodnow decided sociology wouldnot help himunderstand a municipal
government. There is no ideal
city. Different cities differ. And Ford outwardly sparred with sociology.
Conclusion: The younger generation rewrote historico
politics to political science. They
didn't need a sharp break. They had no
citizen polyglot or new industrial machine to fight in their discipline. Also in economics and sociology younger
scholars rewrote the gentry position of a fixed American principle. In political science they went from
abstracts about our AE to detailed study, but with the old gentry bias for rich
(the objective analysis of interest groups lay in the future). Historians didn't transfer to liberal
modernity either. They didn't use econ
and social basis for us, but used our English history instead. Turners frontier topic of sectionalism being
democratizing he got no support from socialosgists (who thought industry and
nationalism were all (like the econs).
But though histicism opened a gulf between the past and the future many
still saw the past as relevant to a changing future but looked to sociology
synthesis to apply their findinngs. In
1903 historians were still smarting from the departure of the poli scientists
and social scientists got vicious when historians wouldn't accept Giddings
evolutionary look at society. But Adams
said we must discover what really happened, but left the door open for
synthesis.
PART 4
AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE AS
THE STUDY OF NATURAL PROCESS, 1908-1929
CH 9 NEW MODELS OF AMERICAN
LIBERAL CHANGE
The crowd of social
scientists (a strange late progressive cohort) wasn't genteel or academic. The schools were making more
specialists. Many did journalism, came
from the country at older ages and were attracted as well as repulsed by the
city. Wome were for strict control in
proportion to their feeling out of control.
They
had a sense of historic dislocation.
They transversed millenia in coming to the city. And when seeing that if all written history
of makind were placed next to all mankind in 12 hours Bacon would have written
at one minute before midnight. The
present is a novelty. Thinking the past
irrelevant and the present a breach to
the future makes one a modern.
Pragmatism fit in well here. Dewey said that old philosophy swerched for
eternal truths new philosophy must consider the changing. This is deontnian evolution applied to
philosophy. Philosophy must become
"a method of moral and political diagnosis and prognosis. "since we live forward what should
experience be but a future implied in the present?" He called pragmatic intelligence
"Americas own implicit principle of successful action" and the means
to our "Salvation" (pg316) and we need the courage of intelligence to
follow wither social and scientific changes direct us. Modernism cut short Americas little interlude
into historicism. The word
"process" became big. This
emerged from historicism and the recognition of history as continuity, not
discrete events but means - ends relationships. Individual events aren't important, the process is and
"precess" is a common denominator between nature and history a convergence
of historicisms continuous change and social scientific look at history as
natural evolution. Social scientists
came to understand american history as a self renewing natural process ingering
in the character of liberal society.
This found companionship in anthropology where Franz Boas challenged the
linear model of evolutionary development after the ingeritance of acquired
characteristics was disproven and folks more looked to the peculiar interacting
factors that make human variety and progress.
Political
Crisis 1912-1920
The
first round of disillusionment came after the sucesssful attack on progressive
legislation by conservatives, seeing the supreme cvourt shoot down progressive
legislation made folks see that progressive action wasn't keeping up with
economic and social change so more social control was needed. And after WWI folks thought that a new order
could come out of the ruin. But all
that they got out of it was a feeling of of impotence. A recourse away from subjectivity to facts
happened. Perhaps stats would give
themauthority. Technology wasn't seen
as an unqualified good. Dewey said we
don't control technology it controls us.
But "the recourse of a courageous humanity is to press forward...
until we have a control of human nature comparable to our control of physical
nature. The war increased the
acceptance of irrational psychologies (Frued and Behaviorism). Thomas grew pessimistic about our ability to
avoid decline through change, change comes from individuals, but society opposes
individuals. Only the "creative
man" working with scientific law would be able to affect change. Also, our place as post WWI world police
made us think of control. They also got
a boost as many social scientists were used in the war effort. And our wartime effort was awesome. And
during the war those with wrong views were fired, those left were to turn their
attention wholly to the new "business of science"
New
Concepts of Science: Positivism was reconstructed. Karl Pearson'sGrammar of Science denounced science as objective
truth saying it only reflects our senses and ways of logic, but its the best
tool we've got. And pragmatism
particularly Dewey's reworked out our view of science: Knowledge is socially constrated and its
validity determined by its usefulness to human purposes, purposes that are
plural and changing. If science is
defined by its method, its not because that method provides special access to
phenomenal experience, but because that method leads to practical knowing in
the world and is sustained by a socially organized world of experience. This turned philosophers job to the
practical with natural science setting the standard for knowing. It is unclear whether Dewey was urging all
fields of knowledge to adopt the abstracting generalizing, quantitative method
of natural science. He said "using
the historic was good for general events by isolating small common
factors. Dewey said only when nature is
considered mechanical can it be subdued to human purposes. Only when quantities were subordinated to
quantitative and mathematical relationships.
Though he criticized the extremes he endorsed behaviorism generalyy as
the humanities andpositivistic science pulled apart he saw more the difference
between the abstracting generalizing method of natural science and the
sympathetic "observation of concrete particulars required for the moral
and practical use of science. He
continued to use particular problems to fuse method with purpose. The advancing abstract, generalizing scientific method left historic knowledge
with out firm legitimization.
HIstorians and philosophers in Germany sought to explain the character
of historical knowledge. Dilthey came
up with hermeneutic conclusions and Dewey's method could lead to the same
conclusion, Wever had an idea. But
Dewey was so wed to positivist prognosis that he avoided the problem of how a
historical world could be understood. Dewey thus left social sciences on
undeterminant pragmatic grounds from which it could go several directions. R. Hoxie used Deweys legitimization of
genetic analysis to develop a historic method.
Mitchell, Bently and Park used pragmatismto develop heterodox but still
positivistic concepts of social science.
For most social scientists of this period pragmatism is a more
superficial influence reinforcing the relativistic lessons of economic
interpretations of history and the call for a "policy of opportunism' in
social reform. These 2 new influences
on science, pragmatic and positivist made folks look for a genuine science of
social control and leading others to wonder how natural scientific method could
be applied to the historical field of social experience.
Bently
and Beards social science. Bently
rectified the individual and society and science by looking at groups to
account for individuals insides he took Watson's "external" and
"potential" activities and "tendencies" of activity. All measurable. Individual ideas are faulty reflections of the groups. This book of Bently's gave minimal attension
to administrators. Bently said despite
what socialists say there are no real classes.
This hard grouping doesn't exist.
Smaller groups do. Not a caste
system here. Bently hadn't seen the
South's caste system. He thus set the
model for American pluralistic politics and classlessness, the mainstay of
liberal exceptionalist ideology in the 20th century America. All held in place within a system and
considering the amount of battle there is little bloodshed. Government is the process of adjustment of a
set of interest groups in a particular distinguishable group or system. He denied the system "self realizing
capacity" but it could produce the adjustment or balance of interests and
this creates order. As Polisci was
largely still dedicated to historical realism, this was a novelty, but in
attempts to find stability in constant turmoil and escape for AE it was not
new.
Beard
enters the scene at the tail end of the guilded age search for
transformation. He also bridged the
break of history and political science.
He worked on historic reconstruction and practical political aims. His big claim to fame was grounding
democracy in the development of industrial capitalism. He picked up Bentley's interest groups and
applied in against big business and hoped a stronger government could control
it. But if politics is a manifestation
of economics how can politics change economic destiny, let alone the individual
caught in this organism. Whiggishly his
biggest work 'An Economic interpretation of the Constitution" showed it was
ratified by groups having economic interests in a national government via
credit in the national debt and public land.
It was opposed by groups whose wealth was in local land and politics. This made the constitution less
sacrosance. The constitution was
antimajoritarian. His next work
punctured AE by saying there was an economic aristocracy and a proletariate.
workers struggles would lead to change not evolution, like to Bismark
progressivism and the reformation of catholicism. Thus Beard and Robinson (who thought the process they detailed as
they smashed myths was good) created the new historicism which turned
historiography towards modernity. It
was used in the 1900s also.
PG
346 Bentley's critiqu was part of a wider scientific revolt against sythetic,
normative sociology grounded in universal characterists of human nature and
moral economy.
Thomas
first groung our behavior in primitive responses like irratability and then
said long rage can mediate it. But then
he argued (with Franz Boaz) that savages are just as intelligent as we and put
lots of emphasis on environment and socialization. He did a big survey on immigrants and negros which involved
distance and sympathy as an
anthropologist, can make the stranger femailiar and the familiar strange. He called the survey social psychology; the
study of attitudes. He emphasized
nationality and said polish as well as American values are good. People don't have blank slates to be
Americanized. And the group is being
Americanized. Social flux + attitudes =
new attitudes. And attitudes are a
product of a whole life. Therefore case
studies are better than stats which just show symptoms of attitude in general
(In the specific, he said the second generation needs to be Americanized more
than the first).
Park
agreed that since groups and individuals are always in flux attitudes are
important. Sentiments and attitudes
were found in Hume and Adam's "sympathy" This linked the public (also
the public has institutions of authority). his texxt on sociology had chapters
on competition, conflict, accomodation and assimilation. Competition creates impersonal social order.
(In the process, not structure).
Accomodation is social (where we do not really find control. All is natural like an ecosystem. In the south the process of assimilation
leading to voluntary association and order via competition was hampered by the
skin color which would lead to black nationalism. We don't have classes (even socialism only created a party) but
vocational groups (would they become distinct, like cultural groups)? In the city (the center of modern society
and proper area of study) as primary groups break do we need an American form
of social control. What has nature in
store for us! We need social control of
nature to protect the individual in his struggle to remain an individual in the
overstimulating city. 18th century
enlightenmnet and 19th century romanticism and liberalism make for the force
towards individualism. In the
historically created money economy this created potential for psychic
existence. Sociologists study the same
stuff as historians, but take things out of context and then are a natural
science (science being denoted, not by what it studies, but by how) but at the
cost of abstraction (not vital, intuitive and experiential like historical
knowledge). The abstract can convert
enlarging history to useful knowledge and tools. History and interpretation are propaeductic (providing
introductory instruction) to sociology. Max Weber's relationship of history to
natural history asked why unless meaningful make history into natural history
(history with categories and comparisons).
Objectivism
in sociology- Thomas and park set the tone for behavioristic science of social
control but understood the complexities of turning mental and historic life
into objects of science better than those that followed. luther Bernard for example who thought all
revious were mistakily attracted to utilitarianism hedonistic psychology - feeling
could not set the standard in a world where training must modify instinct,
where culture and artifice are more important than the "natural" the
true social standard comes from the development of the organic society. True freedom comes from total control, not
the individual.
Bernard
wasnt' the only one in this new school of objectivism. his Chicago moral objectivism was matched by
Giddings methodological objectivism which involved natural selection and
stats. Chapin took up this work but
said there were too many variables for the exact controls of science to
work. Thomas said there are only 2
social situation and attitude therefore case studies not stats are the way for sociology.
From
Veblen to intitutional economics- Hoxie
and Mitchell.
Hoxie
saw the heaping of facts hoping a principle will emerge as wrong. Bu selecting a subject it interests you
because of something specific. Taking
from Dewey he said to approach history with a well formulated question. He did participant observer histories of
labor unions he found 1820 craft unions, the 1830 are utopian, 1900 class
unions, but they didn't work cause class isn't a good divider in America.
Davenport was a marginalist who said we must
study economics as it is and money doesn't come from moral savings it comes
from banks. He followed Veblen's notion
of pecuniary v. industrial income and his masterpiece is the 1913
"Business Cycles". it rallied
for empirical research in economics as Thomas' polish peasant would years later
in sociology. It was based on declining
expectations bringing a shrinking of credit and then liquidation. This was a description and then a history
thing and then an economic thing, very confusing. He was easily real and accepted unlike Veblen, by
neo-classicists. He did say, however
great that the general good didn't necessarily come out of this economy based
on making profit, not things for individuals.
And it was made for imperfect plannng
not for socialism, he said the government should publish more
statistical barometers. This would help
lessen the business cycles that were getting more and more severe as credit
grew in importance.
Mitchell
was historico in that he never thought any two cycles the same. The differences were due to outside forces
like wars, tarrifs, peace and changes in economic organization. This was loved as reassuring and business
people took to it. He then, after fame,
decided to study psychology and economics.
He went to behaviorism and sanctioned by Deweys caution to look to the
concrete and studied consumer behavior, labor relations and the outward,
non-esoteric psychological behavior of people and using stats psych guessing
would be over for economists. He
thought the rest of social sciences could become natural sciences from this. Of course, this measured the behavior of the
aggregate, not historical actors. Money
rationalized economic behavior. Thus
the uses of money lays a foundation for a rational theory of that life Burke
took an inclusive line saying historical economists could study the
institutional change while marginalists could study the rational logic of
business. Of course this would entail
it assuming or not the market.
This
late progressive cohort shaped their disciplined for the liberal understanding
of modern America. Their choices were
of liberal AE's that shaped change as much as reflected it. Process put them all at the intersection of
history and nature, seeking to insture both concrete and particular and
flux. Part of the attraction of looking
at process was the ability to project an idealized liberal vision of modern
American society with out decay or race or trouble. Yet even within this framework required social control. History was no longer the framework/solution
model it was the problem. After them
the shift goes from historico evolutionary models to professional specialized
social science models that look at the short term.
CH 10 Scientism
Scientism
took over after WWI. It made for order
in historic flux. It made good on the
positivist claim that natural science provided certain knowledge, prediction
and control. Science was now defined by
its method. It arose due to
professionalism, channelling anxieties and disillusion with politics into
professionalism. After the war,
progress was still believed in. But
history was distrusted so the belief was in less progress coming from the human
mind and also not from organic history.
And progress became dependent on science. But science couldn't prove progress, so "change" became
a common replacement. Just after the
war, mitchell published a study on distribution of wealth that shocked may who
had faith in the US Then came economic
recovery, decline in labour repression, the versaaile, and the league of
nations and a reactionary president.
Thus eroded the belief that politics was going to get us any
progress. As the man in the streets and
the rich shrunk from the immediate penalties of trying to change capitalism it
fell to social science experts.
The
departure from politics involved some bitterness. Stuart Rice said those helping the poor couldn't get emotional
satisfaction in their own class.
Psychology with psychoanalysis attacked politics. All due to your own problems. Emotion goes towards scientificness in
social science experts. Capitalist
fellowships started boosting science especially in chicago. But this involved a leash. The New School for Social Research had Dewey
and Veblen, was committed to scientism, but also social democracy and therefore
got no funds. The late progressive
shift from understanding to control was put to extremely objective measures of
behavior and statistics without values.
In this context Dewey's pragmatism served a number of functions. He was for the whole move to science (406). The range of pragmatisms showed the range of
scientism. The defining statement of
Dewey's pragmatism and the decade was his THE QUEST FOR CERTAINTY. He held to his theme of perpetual change,
but derided folks in ability to accept it and constant need for certainty.
Security amid change would come from pragmatic intelligence hence the
scientific method. The power of method
is the power of action through which problematic situations are resolbed. Action in history against the uncertainty in
history. And the national basis of
security was against the confusion of tongues, beliefs and purposes that could
be resolved by scientific methodology that brings consensus. He, went lefter and lefter. After the 20s he was for social democracy. But was still in the discourse of AE.
------Institutionalism V.
Neoclassicism in economics---
The institutional economics
of Hoaxie and Mitchell became the distinctive feature of economics in the 1920s
and 30s. But its dent in neoclassicism
predominance didn't suplant its position.
Johnson and others helped neoclassicism incorporate progressive and
historic change by saying that the market was great and had a tendancy towards
fairness, but though socialism was bad, there was room for government
action. Others developed stats and
helped fill out terms of government practice, but didn't challenge leave neoclassical economics. But some found the static neoclassicism not
good in reform and in a moving world and started institutional economics. And was useful in application as some
pragmatic definitions of science would require. There was no reason to exclude evidence that was relative just
because it couldn't be treated with accuracy.
The proper standard of science was comprehansiveness. This got us the concept of externalities. One Clarke Jr. said if overhead costs were
born by the employers and would include down factories and workers wages
(turned to salaries) it would ease competition and flatten the business cycle. The turning point back to neo-classicism came when Mitchell was
attacked. "stats offer us useful
analytical and empirical tools but cannot remake theory" This coincided with 1927 sacco and vansetti
and 2nd wave of radicalism looked immanent and nationalistic economics upsurge
in Europe and threat again of socialism.
But also from intitutionalisms failure to study institutions and find a
focus. Anyhow it, like neoclassicism,
couldn't sove the depression.
Institutionalism
as a movement, however, fell victim to the Great Depression and its Keynsian
remedy. For self-proclaimed experts in
historical change, their inability to come to any better understanding of the
Depression than their neoclassical colleagues was a considerable deficit. Mitchel in particular, who predicted like
everyone else that the downturn would right itself within a year or two, was
driven deeper into his program of empirical research by this proof of
ignorance. Whether a more powerful and
genuinely historical intitutional economics would have done better is
imposssible to say. Like the
left-liberal economists generally, the intitutionalists were drawn into
Keynesian revision of neoclassicism.
Analyzing
aggregate categories of income and expenditure for the economy as a whole, and
using marginalist analytic techniques, Keynes showed that the economy could
stabilize at levels below full employment.
To function at full employment the market needed the intervention of
government to regulate and supply investment.
Keynesian economics was thus a proof-by the extension of neoclassical
technique itself-of the institutionalists' claim that the market was not an optimum
self -equalibriating process and that the intervention of government was
necessary to achieve democratic social goals.
The Keynesian analysis of aggregate income and expenditure also
reconstituted neoclassicism into macro economic analysis of the national
economy as a whole and marginalist microeconomics. Institutionalism had helped
to prepare the way for Keynes's governmentalist solution and to provide the
statistical information on which macroeconics was built. Keynsian macroeconomics in turn built onto
the neoclassical paradigm those new liberal public goals that had been shown to
be compatible with and necessary for optimal market function, such as
governmental rules for fair competition, a welfare safety net, and fiscal
stimulation of the market.
AS
one economist ruefully explained, Keynes "promises something that cannot
be resisted: full employment and high levels of consumption without serious
disclocation of our institutions"
He was rueful because the claims of democracy remained subordinate to
market requirements, logic and premises.
Moreover, Keynesian neoclassicists in America, unlike the Marxists
influences Keynesians in England, inserted the concept of equilibrium into
macroeconomics, removing it still further from the exigencies of history. Over time the core microeconomic theory has
become progressively more massive and more mathematical, and its ahistorical
conceptual world increasingly dominates macroeconomics. In that disciplinary context, the presence
of history remains adventitious (acquired by accident: appearing in an unusual
place or sporadic manner). As the
institutionalisms originally recognized, without the countervailing power of a
historically grounded theory, the historical and institutional dimensions of
economic life and the values they embody become vulnerable and unreal.
--Frank Knight and the final
turn against History---
He
ruthlessly showed contradictions in all and became the founder of the
libertarian Chicago School of Economics.
Premise is that the life of man is a series of ordered intelligent
choices. As a christian he wrote
temptation is a furnace house in which
g o d proves character . Life is an
arena for moral choices. He studied
Bullock's text which emphasized consumption as moralchoice (save, avoid luxury becuase its injurious). He found that because we generally knopw the
consequences of our actions we can learn we are making good choices but the
externals of the future bring uncertainty and there is risk so intuition is
more important. The are defects in
capitalism as in knowledge. He feared
reforms offsprings. The irony of
choices having proximate morality and bad ends! Political encroachment on economics lessened the capacity for
intelligent choice. Market caused
rationality: Politics is played for poswer not rational ends and must stay out
of econ Politics is outside the
material market (which causes intelligence) therefore involves bad thinking and
demigogues. He was anti
institutionalist and anti the "art" of economics (not the science). He hated Dewey and applied economics
words to the analysis of politics and
history disappeared as the utility maximizing behavior of individuals ascended.
--The influence of
instrumental positivism on sociology---
Instrumental
positivism is a worship of statistics as objective and professional and giving
answers. But I see how they preclude
studying other than what is value judgements or solutions. OGborn turned on to psychoanalysis and saw
repressed economic motives in history and that all social philosophies come
from childhood complexs and we need statistics not theory in social science. So
we must separate social scince and life.
Thomas' Polish Peasant cmae under attack as subjective and unreliable. His idea of attitudes though was systematized
by Emory Bogartus who used surveys to measure attitudes, he became skeptical of
folks self knowledge though and the use of groups was seen as
unscientific. He replied for the
social interactionists though saying the individual was no more final than the
group. His work was carried on by
Thrstone who made sliding scales to measure attitude (he also realized the
imperfect relation of atitute to action.
Thomas
thought opinions weren't attitudes.
Attitudes came from a whole life in complex social situations. Opinions were simple and out of
context. So he liked the case study
which gave more accuracy in prediction because it gave meaning. Though he increasingly accepted statistics
as a correlary. Symbolic
interactionists claim his progeny (george herbert mead et al.) saying all
social interaction involved an irreducable level of symbolic meaning (as
against behaviorists abandoning of meaning).
But thomas was grounded in the individual.
Park
saw all as ecologically grown, like circles growing around a city of people,
space and the changing position of the individual in it statistically maybe the
destiy of sociology, but then changed to include attitudes in space which
determined individuals and was worthy of study. Then he grought in the individual as a reflection in contrast
with others via social status. History
and interpretation were still out.
--History as Nature----
If
history didn't do well in sociology netither did the understanding of
history. The focus went to
community. But uncertainty of our fate
kept it alive. Park saw cyclically
evolving to adaption due (often to market pressures). He found race identity disappeared and peoples died out but
civilization lives. At first he wasn't
sure about blacks though. He trained
many black sociologists. All this
assimilation came at the cost of homogeneity.
Parks method, and its disassociation with politics and history, mapping
and opinions is known as the Chicago school of sociology. One such study found commonalities is one
area.
In the
20s ogburns "social changes" book carried the evolutionary field of
Western history with an a-historic methodology. He found compelling the idea of cultural evolution above material
evolution leading to "a majestic order". His idea of cultural lag showed culteral evolution behind
material evolution. He tried to use
statistics fruitlessly. He thought
social trails material, so social control is impossible., but social adjustment
would constitute "social progress".
Park countered that the adjustment wasn't conscious it was just
naturalism in action.
Another
person, Chapin, saw cumulative progress, but realized that stats are hard to
use in history because categories change.
Change calculated cycles in everything.
Basing this on biology he attributed the curves to social learning and
turned to stats on "speech relations" and "muscular behavior
patterns" for verification. Sociologies traditional problem of historical
evolution didn't mesh with science. At
this time Teggard at Berkely tried to divide history into art or science. He attacked the exclusion of art was thus
the exception that proved the rule.
---Conversion and resistance
in Political Science---
Political
science instantly responded to Merriams 1921 call for a new science of
politics. He didn't want to abandon the
heritage of historical realism, but sought to refine it by the practice of
measurement, comparison and standardization of material. A ten year study to analyze the length and
kind of supreme court ruling was one example.
A science of administration was started. Here they were usurped by economists. In administrering ability tests psychologists took over. The lack of science background always hurt
them, the whiggish political scientists managed to just sever administration and
politics, helping centralize decision making power. Merriam was, like others, disillusioned with politics and snuck
in his avocation of psychology to show that people were irrational and had to
be led. He thought public education via
new psych techniques could create a new citizen (with eugenics to boot).
Lasswell
was Charles Merriams student. He was of
the same ilk. He said propoganda is a
manipulation of symbols which is the naturealinnevitable accompanymnet of
arguement and persuation that existed in a democracy. Propoganda was good as it would promote the "engineering
frame of mind" The conflict model
is out of date the propogandist understands society is a process of defining
and affirming meaning. Laswell studied
under psychologists. This was a
transfer, not a change from, of the progressives belief in resolving
political conflict via public education
to a disillusioned crowd. He was aware
this could be used to bad ends, but said there is no tool invented that a
burglar cannot use. A more liberal use
of Merriam's agenda for political science was another student's use of
statistics to guage attitudes of non-voters.
HE found they didn't know when or where to vote. Being afraid of being lumped in with the
outmoded historical method or leftists ways they aboided concepts like interest
groups, didn't differentiate people and came to the conclusion that non-voters
were just like the public at large.
----for and against
scientism---
There
was, of course, a backlash against the encroachment of psychology and the
worship of science over historico-politics.
The right opposing pragmatism attacked scientific appraoch and looked to
accepting "coherent logic and normative values". Pragmatism they said was the root of
positivism and positivism led to the empiricism of facts in method and fascism
in Mussolini's Europe. What of
democracy if we use behabiorism which denies man as a rational actor? If man is a blank slate should education or
blind self interest dominate. If all
natural science and competition what of the individual. Both Beard and Dewey show anxiety of living
in historical times. Beard's 1926
presidential address to the APSA is a case in point. He urged political science to train its students for an
unforseeable future. He somewhat of an
antiscientist guy, argued agains measurables of the logically discribable, for
a greater use of the deductive and imaginative. Conservative imagination could adjust us to our human destiny. His speech was laden with mechanical
references to doom. In his arguement
against putting science in political science he quoted Benedetto Croce"
reality cannot be described without philosophical implications". But he had little effect, though on
historians maybe. The traditional vs.
the scientistic did deadlock and funding to the APSA turned, after the
depression , to scientism of behavioral science, systems analysis and public
management.
The
advent of scientism marked in many ways the resolution of the gilded age crisis
in AE. First the view of us as outside
history by Francis Wayland et al, then the crisis forced us into history. But it was staved off by scientism. Both technical and professionalism helped
social science distance itself from national ideals that weren't so bright
shiny new. these trends have the least
impact in political scientist coming from a trained historicist perspective and
directly responsible for the republic they tend to keep the AE republican
language alive. But most social
sciences recast all in scientific language.
Institutionalists came from sociologists old attack on classical
economics. And beard carried the
historians attack on the scientism of political sciences. But, beyond interdiscipline conflict all
were torn by scientism. The
institutionalists and neoclassicists both claimed it. In sociology hard edged behaviorism and positivism set the terms
for debate. Since the decline of Small
there was no historical school to mount a counter attack. But gidding's followers (Ogden and Grolpin)
addressed short term change and what Chicago retained of history was its
acknowledgement of situations and the symbolic nature via which this was
changed. The characteristic premises of
historicism were divided between the
the schools and both subdued to scientism.